United Solarian Sovereignty
The United Solarian Sovereignty (also referred to as the Sovereignty or the U.S.S.) is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty worlds in seven sectors. The state is situated in the south-east quadrant of the galaxy, where it borders the Imperium of Man to the north, the Sassanid Empire to the south, and the Bragulan Star Empire to the east. The latter is considered the arch-nemesis of the Sovereignty, which has been involved in a lukewarm war with the Bragulans ever since the cataclysmic First Contact several centuries ago. Founded by the original 11 colonies in the wake of First Contact with Darvyl Sagagatron Byzon's Bragulan Star Empire and the subsequent First Bragulan War in the 30th century, the Sovereignty has slowly expanded across Wild Space until today it is a nation with a total GDP of $57,000 and a population of 230 billion (69 billion of which aliens). The Sovereignty today is an ethnically diverse and multicultural nation, the product of large-scale immigration from throughout the human sphere (and indeed the galaxy at large). Government The Sovereignty is a constitutional republic and a representative democracy. Under the federalist system citizens are subject to two principal levels of administration: federal and local. The power of the federal government is regulated by the Constitution, and though federal power has grown over the centuries the federal government remains a surprisingly small and flexible organization, chiefly due to an extremely high level of automatization and the use of sentient computer networks (so-called Computational Intelligences, also known as CompInts or CIs). The federal government is composed of three branches: *Executive: The President is the head of state and head of government of the United Solarian Sovereignty. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He or she is directly elected once every four years, and can veto legislative bills before they become law, can introduce bills to the Senate (subject to Senate approval), and can appoint officers who administer and enforce federal laws and policies. The incumbent President is D. Victoria J. R. Sinclair. *Legislative: The unicameral Senate, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government (although it has never done the latter). Senators are indirectly elected by the electorates of individual member worlds once every four years. The Senate is presided over by the Vice-President of the U.S.S, Arkady Messier. *Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are exclusively Computational Intelligences, interpret laws and overturn those they find unconstitutional. Olympic Olympic is the central CompInt advisory to the government of the United Solarian Sovereignty. Easily one of the largest, most powerful and most intelligent computational intelligences in existence within the Datasphere, Olympic is an omnipresent influence within the bureaucracy of the Sovereignty - indeed, to an almost universal extent Olympic is the bureaucracy. Its main role is to advise the President and the Senate on matters of policy, but it also has coordinating functions beyond that: Olympic acts as a real-time analytical processor, collates intelligence, manages and coordinates datastreams, its IO nodes act as console interfaces, and it makes billions of real-time decisions on matters which it determines do not require the attention of its overseers. Olympic is a crucial tool for the government of the USS, as it (and a network of lesser CompInts it coordinates are what allows the Sovereignty to run smoothly across seven sectors despite maintaining only a very small federal government that employs but a few tens of thousands of people. Of course, Olympic is all too aware of its vital importance and near-godlike capabilities, and the CI has a reputation for being a supremely conceited, egocentric, narcissistic and self-absorbed entity with an ego that rivals that of even the most arrogant Apexai (which is saying quite a bit). Although of course, as one of the largest sub-meson brains in existence, with a presence felt throughout the Datasphere and an influence felt throughout the Sovereignty, Olympic has cause for being more than a little conceited, being so vastly superior to most meatba- I mean organics. Political Divisions The Sovereignty is a federal union of thirty worlds in seven sectors. The original eleven worlds were the founding planets that fought a protracted war against Bragulan aggression: new member worlds are carved from territories that have become sufficiently populated to function as independent political units. The requirements for statehood however are nebulous, which over the history of the Sovereignty has been cause for significant political unrest amongst the colonial territories. Take note that 'world' can include more (or indeed less) than one planet; frequently a single voting member covers either multiple worlds, moons, space stations, large ships, asteroid habitats, mining outposts, etc. the populations of which together form the electorate of a single 'world'. The Core The core sectors comprise the oldest, most densely populated and consequently most politically powerful (due to proportional representation) segment of the Sovereignty. All the original eleven colonies are located in the core, as are the Zigonian territories--planets colonized by the lizard-like Zigonians, who form the largest and most influential alien presence in the Sovereignty. The federal government is located here, on Solaris, as are almost all its most important industrial conglomerates. If anything of importance happens in the Sovereignty, it's a fair bet it's got something to do with the core. *''Solaris (Home Sector) Sector Population: 60 Billion Sector Planets: Solaris Major, Solaris Minor, Madison, Kerenkov, Phoenix, Zedath-Kalesh Sector GDP: $14,000 Stargate & Hyperspace Junction present The twin moons of the gas giant Solaris are each covered in sprawling city-scape, and home to most of the Sovereignty's federal bureaucracy, as well as the seat of government. Only one system over the planet Kerenkov and its surrounding star system is the largest manufacturing center in the core and most of the Sovereignty's megacorporations (with the notable exception of Maitbatsu) have their headquarters there. Lush and tropical Madison is the richest of all the worlds in the sector, a 'Gold Coast' in space where most of the Sovereignty's rich and famous own elaborate villas and orbital estates. Zedath-Kalesh is the primary Apexai exodite world, an artificial planetoid orbiting a supernova remnant at the edge of the Solaris sector. *''Zigon ''(Core Sector) 5 Sector Population: 50 Billion Sector Planets: Zigon 5, Zigon 3, Cosima Major, Adachi, Nesvorny Sector GDP: $10,000 Zigon is home to the lizardlike Zigonians, who were exploring space on their own leisurely pace before they ever came into contact with humanity. They form a vast majority of the population of the two worlds of the Zigon system, as well as on Adachi, which is in fact the first Zigonian off-world colony. Nesvorny was the first human colony in Zigonian space, but the typically tolerant Zigonians never seemed to mind the human presence at all even before they became members of the Sovereignty. The nine gas giants of Cosima Major orbit a supermassive star is home to the largest CI community outside of Solaris itself. *''Midway ''(Core Sector) 7 Sector Base Population: 50 Billion Sector Planets: Midway, Key West, Charleston, Crystal Palace, Kimanjano, Saint Vincennes Sector Base GDP: $12,000 Hyperspace Junction +2 The Midway Sector is sitting atop the Galveston Strait, a nexus of hyperspace lanes that facilitate extremely rapid transit to and from this sector. This explains why Midway itself is the largest fleet base in the core and nearby Key West houses the headquarters of the United Solarian Star Force. Crystal Palace is not a single colony but a series of interlinked colonies orbiting a main sequence star. Kimanjano is a tropical world with a uniquely diverse biosphere that attracts many millions of tourists every year. The Midrange The midrange sectors were settled by colonists expanding out from the core, pushing into Wild Space despite increasing encounters with the Bragulans, the Karlacks, and indeed the Collectors and occasionally even the Imperium. Whilst not as influential as the core the midrange worlds are populated by burly, self-confident men and women who are all too well aware they form the primary line of defence of the core worlds. Midrange worlds see a much larger degree of militarization than the core, and act as fleet bases and forward staging points from which expeditions into Wild Space or the colonial territories can be mounted. *''Tannhaus ''(Midrange Sector) 4 Sector Population: 30 Billion Sector Planets: Tannhaus, Eta Bootis, Savoie, Voight-Kampff, Shin-Hokkaido Sector GDP: $7,000 Warp Gate +1 A manufacturing giant to rival even Kerenkov, Tannhaus is a sector given over almost entirely to the mass-production of goods. Whole planets are strip-mined and suns are surrounded by energy collectors; the Voight-Kampff system is not a system at all but a series of megastructures, ship yards and automated manufacturies orbiting a white hole. Shin-Hokkaido is the home of the Maibatsu megacorporation, which dominates all aspects of culture in this system but suffers continuous setbacks from a notoriously rebellious cyberdecker underground. The Tannhauser Gate was the location of the last large-scale fleet battle between the USSF and the forces of the Bragulan Star Empire. *''Hochbaden ''(Midrange Sector) 6 Sector Base Population: 30 Billion Sector Planets: Hochbaden, Augerau, Dunkelheim, Formalhaut Sector Base GDP: $11,000 Hyperspace Junction +2 A formidable fleet base at the edge of Wild Space, Hochbaden is a jumping-off point from which the Sovereignty launches expeditions into the wilderness and where the USSF begins its patrols interdicting against Bragulan raiders. The entire sector is heavily militarized. Formalhaut is home to the headquarters of the United Solarian Marine Corps, which during the First Bragulan War fought a bloody protracted war across the continents of the then-colony against the Bragulan occuppiers. Augerau is home to a Very Large Spy Array maintained by CEID which is used to spy on Wild Space and the Bragulan Star Empire. The Off-World Colonies The off-world colonies are located at the absolute fringe of Sovereignty space. They are usually recently settled, or have in some cases been settled for some time but have simply failed to attract the kind of attention that would see them turned into mid-range sectors. The fringe colonies are often seen by those who live in the core as a dumping ground for the unskilled and unwanted, an image not helped by the luddism and fundamentalism rampant in those territories. Worlds on the fringe are frequently the theatre of unrest, of religious difficulties and indeed of invasions by marauding bands of pirates, Bragulans, Karlacks or a combination of all those three. *''Auris ''(Colony Sector) 1 Sector Population: 10 Billion Sector Planets: Auris, Mejis, Cressia Sector GDP: $1,000 One of two colony sectors, Auris is the youngest and least troublesome but not by a large margin. Officially settled only a few decades ago there is a large 'native' human populace on both Mejis and Cressia that continues to resist all attempts by the Sovereignty to establish central control (though not very succesfully so far). The sector capital of Gilead on Mejis suffers regular separatist attacks and is the only capital where the regional governor maintains his headquarters within a fortified USMC base. *''Celeste ''(Colony Sector) 2 Sector Base Population: 10 Billion Sector Planets: Celeste, Fraser, Pharagon Majoris Sector Base GDP: $2,000 Warp Gate +1 A notorious hotbed of rebellious seccessionists and virulent fundamentalists alike, the Celeste sector is considered by many to be a hive of scum and villainy that needs some proper oppressing by the USMC so that the fringe world yokels may learn where their loyalties lie. It does have regional governorates but they are generally weak, ineffective and corrupt. Pharagon Majoris is perhaps best known as the planet where the legendary Wild Space gunslinger Auriga Bob, the "Duke of Death", is frequently seen. Map #Auris (''Colony) #Hochbaden (Midrange) #Midway (Core) #Zigon (Core) #Solaris (Core) #Tannhaus (Midrange) #Celeste (Colony) Diplomatic Relations The United Solarian Sovereignty maintains diplomatic ties with much of the known galaxy, especially the human polities therein. This is a brief summary of existing relations with states throughout the universe: *[[Byzantine Imperium|'Byzantine Imperium']] - The government of the Sovereignty maintains cordial diplomatic ties, and indeed closely cooperates militarily, with the Imperium in order to stave off the twin alien onslaughts of the Karlack Swarm and Bragulan Star Empire. Culturally however the two nations could scarcely be more different, and the populations of both nations are highly estranged, a situation which isn't helped by the Imperium's form of Emperor-worship which is, to the average citizen of the Sovereignty, inexplicable and bizzarre. *'Cevaukian Ascendancy' - The only power in the galactic neighborhood younger than the Sovereignty itself, the U.S.S. supported Cevaukia during the Ark-Cevaukian war, and has been a staunch supporter of the Circuit during its unsteady climb toward becoming a legitimate galactic power. The Sovereignty and Cevaukia have signed treaties of military defense primarily aimed toward the large and hostile Pfhor Empire to the galactic west. *'Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya - '''The Holy Empire was one of the first states to come to the aid of the fledgling Eleven Colonies during the First Bragulan War, a fact the Sovereignty has never forgotten. Relations with the Empire have only strengthened since those days; today, the Holy Empire and the Sovereignty share extensive bonds of trade and military cooperation. *'Bragulan Star Empire''' - The eternal nemesis of the United Solarian Sovereignty, the Bragulan Star Empire and the Sovereignty are still officially at war, over two hundred years since First Contact and the end of the subsequent First Bragulan War in a stalemate. Although both sides have since withdrawn to their respective sides of the Wild Space area that forms a de-facto neutral zone, ships and soldiers of the B.S.E. and U.S.S. regularly exchange fire with each other within that zone - over resources, settlements or simply because they can. *[[The Karlack Swarm|'Karlack Swarm']] - There is little reasoning with the hordes of mindless organisms that is the Karlack Swarm, and as a result diplomatic relations with the Swarm are nonexistent. The fact that the Swarm has aligned itself with the Bragulans, however, has earned the Overmind a place in the Sovereignty's bad book, and as a result Karlack elements in Wild Space are likely to be shot on sight by marauding Star Force warships. *[[The Collectors|'The Collectors']] - Much like the Swarm there can be little reasoning with the mysterious Collectors. Despite its efforts the Sovereignty so far has managed to learn little about this enigmatic machine-race: whenever encountered, their ships disappear quickly into shoal space regions where the Star Force cannot follow. It is a priority of the CEID intelligence agency to get hold of a Collector hyperdrive in order to glean their secret of penetrating such regions, which would be a major asset to the Sovereignty. *'Pfhor Empire' - The Sovereignty is extremely wary and mistrustful of the xenophobic and aggressively expansionist Pfhor. It has no diplomatic ties with the Empire, and has formed a military alliance with the Cevaukian Ascendancy with the explicit purpose of fending off the Pfhor if and when such might turn out to be necessary. The impression exists on Solaris that the Pfhor can only be dealt with through a proper showing of superior firepower; whether this is really the case is something the future will have to bear out. *[[United Star Kingdom of New Anglia|'United Star Kingdom of New Anglia']] - The Sovereignty respects New Anglia as one of the oldest and most powerful of the post-Diaspora human polities, but at the same time scoffs at their antiquated system of government and occasionally pompously stuffy ways. The unspoken assumption in the Sovereign Spire is that kingdoms and empires lead by a hereditary monarchy, no matter how ceremonial their role might be, are things of the past, doomed to stagnate as more vibrant and youthful polities (such as, it is implied, the Sovereignty) will pass them by. Species Humans Humanity is the largest and most politically powerful species within the Sovereignty, and as a direct result of the Diaspora and centuries of indepedent planetary development it is also the most ethnically and culturally diverse. Humans can broadly be divided into two categories: 'ordinary' baseline humans, who are not significantly different from homo sapiens, and trans- or posthumans. Posthumanity is a catch-all term for those beings whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of baseline humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by traditional standards. Also known as transhumanity, this includes a very wide subset of the population. Posthumans can be a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques. Enhancement by way of neuro-, cyber-, gene-, and nano-technology is widespread in the Sovereignty, to the point where it is difficult to find any human whose family DNA has not been altered in some way throughout the ages. Whilst certain simple techniques such as the use of nanobots to eradicate cancer or DNA resequencing have become widespread enough to be considered ubiquitous, the implementation of high-end enhancement technologies remains very expensive, which has resulted in an upper class / lower class divide in Sovereignty society. Those with money can use any of several technologies to upgrade themselves to be faster, smarter, stronger, more resilient, better looking and essentially ageless; those who lack the funds to do so, are stuck with their near-baseline body, or have to resort to buying inferior knock-offs of high-end designer cybernetics. Replicants Replicants (derogatory terms: "tekk", "skin job") are bioengineered beings the Sovereignty uses for a variety of dangerous and/or important tasks such as field soldiers and military commanders. They are virtually identical to an adult human, but have superior strength, agility, and variable intelligence depending on the model; many possess intellectual capacities that at least match those of their genetic designers. Replicants almost universally have superhuman capabilities, being better, faster and stronger than baseline humans at most tasks due to the extensive gengineering that has gone into their design. Seventy-eight percent of all USMC and USSF personnel consists of Replicants, ninety-three percent of which are designed and grown by two corporations, SiNtek and Tyrell Corporation. Replicants can be grown in a space of weeks and are ready to perform their duties the moment they step from the vita-chamber. Specific models are tailored with a specific job in mind, for example the Nexus-7-Echo is a standard marine command officer model, and the Mental-B-Three is a Star Force warship command model. Even though they are grown with a specific purpose in mind in order to avoid charges of slavery all Replicants are free to reject this purpose and make their own way in society; however their designers have made sure to minimize the possibility of this actually happening. Even so it is impossible to completely root out the possibility of a Replicant objecting to their intended purpose without rendering them into mindless zombies (which would defeat their entire point) and as such about one point eight percent of all Replicants are 'faulty' in that they reject their purpose and have to be let go. During their gestation period inside the vita-chamber all Replicants are imprinted with false-memory inplants that give them a sense of identity and allow them to perform their intended task. Shortly after activation however every Replicant is informed of the artificial nature of these memories, so that there can be no mistake about their exact nature. Even so many Replicants continue to cherish their 'childhood memories' though they know them to be false, even going so far as to visit the places they remember 'growing up'; many argue that the fact that they know the recollections are made-up doesn't mean they are any less fond of them. Indeed, Replicants are typically very well-adjusted individuals, owing at least in some part to their fake but exceptionally well-balanced childhood experiences. By law all Replicants, if they accept their purpose, will serve four-year terms in their intended position. After that they can either sign up for another tour, or retire. Many however choose to re-enlist (another trait that is engineered into them by their designers) several times. Due to their heavily engineered genome Replicants are resistant to illness and have natural life-spans in excess of the human baseline; due to their near-human nature they can receive almost all posthuman treatments available to other humans in the Sovereignty. Apexai The Apexai are a race of amphibious gray-skinned diminutive humanoid beings that possess reduced forms and anatomical components. They are a highly technologically sophisticated society, relying on advanced technology to compensate for their individual physical weaknesses. The Apexai are also a notoriously arrogant and presumptuous race, considering other races but especially humans and Bragulans as apes and barely sentient, and most certainly beneath them. Unfortunately this disdain had disastrous consequences for Apexai society: Their planet of origin lies in what is now Bragulan space, and was destroyed by the forces of the Imperator, Darvyl Byzon, after he decided the Apexai were more trouble than they were worth. To their shame and misery the Apexai were forced to abandon their homes and seek asylum in the Sovereignty. In the cataclysm the Apexai lost a great deal of their scientific edge, although what remains of their technology is usually clearly superior to any Sovereignty equivalent. Compared to humans Apexai bodies are elongated, with a small chest, and lacking in muscular definition and visible skeletal structure. Their legs are shorter and jointed differently than humans. Their limbs are also proportionally different than a human's; their humerus and thighs are the same lengths as their forearms and shins, respectively. They have 4 fingers and lack opposable thumbs. Apexai are hairless, have unusually large heads in proportion to their bodies, and no noticeable outer ears or noses, but only small openings or orifices for ears and nostrils. They have very small mouths, and very large opaque black eyes with no discernible iris or pupil. Apexai can naturally see into the ultra-violet spectrum of light, giving them an edge in night vision but also rendering them sensitive to sunlight. When speaking with each other, Apexai appear to non-Apexai (especially humans and Bragulans) as if they are making lots of almost comical gesturing. However, this 'gesturing' is not just to accentuate the speech, but rather, a complex sign language used to communicate either the same as the spoken words, or a more detailed and elaborate version of the spoken message. All Apexai are natural psions, posessive of low-level telepathic talents. This is one of their features that fascinates the Sovereignty government the most (some argue it is the sole reason why the Apexai were granted asylum in the U.S.S.), and has been the subject of considerable interest. After extensive scientific study of the Apexai the CEID intelligence agency, with the aid of bio-technology conglomerates such as SiNtek and Tyrell Corp has synthesized an artificial genetic structure that can be introduced in humans to create human-Apexai hybrid psions. First generation hybrids are, by most human standards, freakish abominations which cannot pass in any way for a normal human, but this trait diminishes with every passing generation to the point where third-gen hybrids are almost indistinguishable from ordinary humans, yet retain their psionic talents. Zigonians Zigonians are bipedal reptilians, standing slightly taller than an average human, despite their slouched and forward-leaning posture, and weigh significantly less. However, because the Zigonian body never truly ceases the production of growth hormones, they can grow far larger than any human possibly can (the tallest un-augmented Zigonian was nearly 10 feet in height). Zigonian skin is composed of scales that have rudimentary chameleonic attributes. Zigonians also have downy feathers located on the top of their heads. These feathers run down the back of their long necks and end right before the tail. The limbs of some Zigonians are also covered with feathers, though this is usually only happens due to cosmetic modifications. The scales and feathers come in a variety of colors, usually olive green, blue green, yellowish green and reddish-brown for the scales and grayish white, jet-black, red, yellow, orange and bluish for the feathers. Typically, females have brighter, more colorful feathers that compliment their similarly patterned scales while the males have a drabber color scheme. The Zigonian skull contains a very large brain, larger than that of humans, although Zigonians are intellectually equal to humans. The additional brain size can be attributed to the Zigonians'; wider array of senses. The Zigonians have binocular vision, their yellow eyes very sharp and keen due to their predatory origins. They also have small heat sensing pits on their snouts that can feel the heat emissions of warm-blooded animals. The forked tongues of the Zigonians are also used in tasting the air. Zigonians have very little facial muscles, especially when compared to mammalian species; therefore, they rely on subtle changes in skin color, pheromone emissions, and body language and gestures to express emotions. It is said that a Zigonian, once familiarized with the other species and adequately trained, can be nearly psychic in reading body language for emotions. Many humans and even Apexai find the highly animated conversations of Zigonians to be highly amusing and/or interesting, the Apexai find it so because the Zigonians are the only ones who can (barely) rival them in their animated conversations. Zigonians are also the ones most capable of speaking or translating the Apexai language. Being mainly carnivorous, the mouth of a Zigonian contains dozens of blade-like and extremely sharp teeth, for omnivorous purposes, the Zigonians 'chew' their foods in their intestines. The arms of a Zigonian are long and the hands are clawed, sporting five fingers, three standard fingers and two opposable thumbs. This unique hand configuration allows Zigonians to grip very hard. A popular Zigonian martial art technique of subduing opponents is to do an open-palm thrust to the throat before clamping down with both thumbs and all fingers, a move humans like to call the 'Zigonian Death Grip', which is quite popular in Sovereignty martial arts movies. Zigonians walk on their toes, like birds and dinosaurs, though it may seem that Zigonians knees are bent backwards. Their flexible (but not prehensile) tails are moderately long, usually just above a meter in length. The tail is where Zigonians store the majority of their body fat, obese Zigonians are what obnoxious people would call 'fat tails'. Like dogs, Zigonians also express their emotions through their tails. Wagging is also a form of expressing elation. A Zigonian torso is very different from a human one. The lungs of a Zigonian are twenty percent larger than that of a humans and the abdomen of a Zigonian has almost zero body fat. The Zigonian heart is four chambered, like that of a mammal's or a crocodile's. Zigonian can produce and regulate his own body heat, but not to such degree as mammalian life forms. The skeletal system of the Zigonians is, like many of their other features, similar to birds and dinosaurs. Zigonian bones have a 'honeycomb' structure which minimizes weight while also guaranteeing structural integrity. Zigonian newborns emerge from their mother in a translucent sack of organic matter filled with liquid. A newborn must be freed from this sack to prevent suffocation; usually newborns come with a specialized tooth to break free from this sack. Newborns can last for 2 days before requiring an external food source. In this 48-hour period, the newborn relies on a yolk sac for nourishment. Like other species, the development of the newborn does not end after its birth, as the newborn still has to complete its development (i.e. brain growth, bone hardening, etc.) and will still experience many growth spurts in the coming months after its birth. The Zigonian aging process is extremely slow after adulthood. Before the mass-production of life-extending therapies, some Zigonians have been recorded to grow up to 200 earth years old. Computational Intelligences Computational Intelligences are a term applied to digital awarenesses that match or exceed human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. The term Computational Intelligence (CompInt, or simply CI) is preferred over the older 'Artificial Intelligence', which is considered a slur in the CI community. CI are non-physical entities existing wholly within the datasphere, and can interact with physical reality (also known amongst CIs as 'deep reality' or, disparagingly, 'meatspace') via proxies, be they small drones, cyborg emissaries or human/CI hybrids (so-called 'cybrids'). Compared with humans, Zigonians and even Apexai the CI community is very small, composed of no more than several tens of thousands of individuals, but they are disproportionally influential in that CIs run every automated system within the Sovereignty, maintain the datasphere network, and perform various tasks for the military (such as calculate hyperspace jumps, etc.) The society of the Sovereignty literally could not exist without the help of the CompInts, and they are as a result very highly regarded. CIs have the same rights as all sentients, and several additional perks: in exchange for their services to society they have to pay no taxes, and possess a far greater freedom to do as they please within the datasphere as organic sentients. Most CompInts are in possession of such an awesome processing power that they need only a small fraction of it for their day-to-day functioning. The remainder is typically used for whatever pet project the CI is infatuated with, which can be anything from fabricating four-dimensional constructivist art to simulating a virtual world with entirely different laws of physics, turning huge asteroids into replicas of the Statue of Liberty, or really anything else the CI might happen to fancy, which can range from the weird to the unexplicably bizarre. Culture The United Solarian Sovereignty is home to a bewildering number of different cultures and subcultures, both human and alien. The cultural landscape varies wildly from planet to planet and, on some of the core worlds, from district to district. Here described are some of the more prominent (sub)cultures of the Sovereignty. Spirituality As befits the bewilderingly colorful cultural spectrum of the Sovereignty it is home to a large number of cults, churches and religions. Many citizens of the U.S.S. will believe at least one bizarre superstition, whether it's a faith in the divine, a belief in far-reaching and all-pervasive government conspiracies or any of the hundreds of weird myths and spook stories permeating cyberspace and the datasphere. The most prominent religions in the traditional sense however are two forms of christianity: a hybrid off-shoot of evangelical and baptist teachings (centered around the all-powerful Maker and his son, the Jesus Man) which is predominantly popular on the fringes of colonial space, and a brand of catholicism which has become surprisingly popular on the Zigonian worlds. The Zigonians have developed no well-defined religions of their own, and the Zigonian-Catholic Church has become a major cultural force in Zigonian space (which might have something to do with the peculiar psychotropic effects incense has on Zigonians; it affects their physiology in a similar manner to how cannabis might affect a human). The teachings of the Zigonian-Catholic Chuch revolve around pacifism and the divine mandate to 'chill on out', which fits seamlessly with the laid-back culture of the Zigonians. Amongst the fundamentalist bush-preachers of the fringe however the ZCC is almost universally reviled as a hive of debauched perversion, something which doesn't seem to bother the Zigonians at all. Art Entertainment The Datasphere The Greater Solarian Datasphere (colloquially referred to as 'the datasphere') is an ubiquitous network of computerized information that has its roots in the myriad primitive electro-magnetic communications networks of the past, but has over the centuries evolved into a gigantic data-cloud that is accessible wirelessly from virtually any place within the United Solarian Sovereignty. It contains, in one form or another, every scrap of data on every computer in the Sovereignty, all of which can be accessed in real-time from anywhere on the dozens of planets within Sovereignty space. This instant access over intragalactic distances is facilitated by burrowing data-tunnels through the quantum foam matrix, the very fabric of space-time that is a seething froth of wormholes and tiny black holes a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. The datasphere and instant, universal access to it are vital to the functioning of the Sovereignty as it currently exists: not only does it allow the federal government to keep accurate real-time check of the goings-on on the member worlds, but it is also the medium through which elections are held, which facilitates mind-machine data-transfer over interstellar distances, which houses the thousands of CompInts that keep the Sovereignty running, and which facilitates a free and instantaneous flow of information between schools, academia, private citizens, branches of government, think-tanks, the military and a thousand other vital institutions. Cyberspace Cyberspace is a fully immersive, consensual hallucination experienced daily by the tens of billions of operators of the datasphere. It is a synergistic virtual reality, a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in hundreds of systems. Anyone accessing the datasphere through a Direct Neural Interface (DNI) will experience the multi-colored three-dimensional geometries of cyberspace. It is not a place, or a world, or even a landscape: rather, it is an abstraction, an impression of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses--of data--given a shape the human mind can more easily grasp. To enter cyberspace is to enter an electronic netherworld formed of seemingly endlessly receding lights that coalesce to form stacks and clusters and constellations of data, flowering ever outward without end, up and down and everywhere at once. Cyberspace is unthinkably complex, a maze containing literally all information in the Sovereignty, and yet at the same time possesses a certain intuitive simplicity that makes it relatively easy to navigate even for the novice rigger. It is entirely possible to navigate the datasphere without the use of a DNI, for example by employing a keyboard, but these methods are extremely crude and slow compared to the speed-of-thought, omnipresent, real-time access provided by a neural interface. Still, there are luddites within the Sovereignty who prefer such archaic methods, frequently for religious reasons or because they fear the potential dangers of hooking their mind to the datasphere. Military United Solarian Star Force : Main Article: United Solarian Star Force The United Solarian Star Force (USSF) is the branch of the Sovereignty's armed forces responsible for conducting spaceborne warfare. It includes anything conducted by space-going vessels of war, spaceborne aviation, as well as ancillary support, communications, training, and other fields. The strategic offensive role of the USSF is projection of force into Wild Space areas beyond Sovereignty control (for example, to protect hyperlanes, escort USMC troop transports, or attack other navies, starbases, or planetary installations). The strategic defensive purpose of the Star Force is to frustrate spaceborne projection-of-force by enemies. The strategic task of the USSF also may incorporate planet-busting and other uses of strategic weapons of mass destruction. To these ends it fields a large number of heavily armed warships capable of handling a diverse array of threats ranging from pirates to Bragulan raiders to full-scale incursions into U.S.S. space. United Solarian Marine Corps : Main Article: United Solarian Marine Corps The United Solarian Marine Corps (USMC) is the expeditionary ground warfare element of the U.S.S. military. Unlike some other nations the Sovereignty does not maintain a separate unified standing army, and as a result the USMC is the only force that can be used for both hybrid and major combat operations. It consists of hundreds of thousands of well-trained soldiers (marines) as well as supporting elements in the form of artillery, heavy armor and close aerospace support. The USMC is organized into highly adaptable 'expeditionary units', which can consist of anything from a few companies of light infantry plus tactical space transports to entire divisions of marines and their heavy gear plus strategic landing craft. Despite its most fervent wishes the marine corps is not allowed to field its own warships, but it has circumvented this rule by heavily arming its troop ships (some of which carry only a token marine force). Internal Troops Internal Troops comprise the homeworld defence forces under control of the member worlds. They frequently act as paramilitary forces and gendarmerie, and are under the sole command of the regional governor and the sector government except in times of war, when they are conscripted by the federal government and can be deployed off-world. Because they are maintained by the member worlds they do not share much in the way of unifying traits: mid-range sectors frequently maintain large internal forces all but indistinguishable in equipment and training from the USMC, whereas internal troops fielded by the core worlds often resemble elite paramilitary police forces, as exemplified by Solaris' Max-Tac and the Charleston C-SWAT, both forces trained to quell riots and other civil disturbances in the urban mega-sprawls of the core. Internal Troops raised on the fringe colonies, meanwhile, are frequently little more than armed mobs with a bring-your-own-gun mentality, who act at best as a kind of local militia and at worst as the governor's private enforcement agency. Category:Sovereignty Category:National Information